In Consideration
by Dr Whatsit
Summary: Maybe the poor guy hadn’t been lying to Miles when he said his neighbor tried to eat him. MI meets Zombie Parody. Details are inside, multichapter..
1. Of Prologues, Toast, and Toes

Author's Note: Firstly, thank Zaedah for this, because she insisted that I follow the urge to write a Medical Investigation meets Zombie Horror flick parody. I think the idea of Miles running from zombies had us both in a fit of giggles. Anyway, it is a multichapter story, it does have some plot, but it is mostly funny. I **HATE** zombies, really I do. They are the muses of my nightmares. They give me the creeps, but I think it was time MI had a zombie story of its own. Even thought it is humor, I will do my best to keep them in character.

Genre(s): Parody, Humor, Horrorish, Drama, Adventure, Romance...okay, just about everything but Western, Spiritial and Angst.

Rating: T for the zombie bit...

Pairing(s): Nat/Con...and maybe another one a little later.

Just think about it...even if I do kill off a character, they'll always come back. XD

_It's been a little over a year since I've started this story--and it's far from completed--but I've decided to go back through it and edit out all the small mistakes. _

_

* * *

_**In Consideration**

**

* * *

**Of Prologues, Toast and Toes.

* * *

Most people just ate toast for breakfast.

Or cereal. Poptarts. Eggs.

No one ate three pounds of raw beef.

At least, Natalie was certain it was beef. Determining the stomach contents of a dead man was tricky business while trying not to touch it or breathe or...look at it.  
Missouri was a uninteresting state. The people were uninteresting, the way they drove was uninteresting—dodging at best-- the way they spoke was uninteresting, even the way they looked was, well, boring. Really. In general, if it was related to Missouri, it was only worth a snooze.

That being said, nothing interesting was supposed to ever happen in Missouri. Granted, a few mutilating murders might occur in the backwoods throughout the year. Other than that, however, nothing resembling a synonym of worthwhile took the time to happen in that state, because it was so damn boring!

Fifteen sick patients, eleven dead patients, and stomach full of raw beef was strange--true--but Natalie had seen interesting and this certainly wasn't in the same ballpark.  
Still, most people usually just ate toast for breakfast.

"Someone was hungry," Natalie managed to cough out, carefully depositing the stomach and contents into the appropriately labeled silver pan.  
Someone was also shot in the forehead, mangled, and looking a tad bit gray that morning, but the disease pathologist figured that stating the obvious to a corpse would not help make it feel better.

Ignoring the permanent snarl on the dead man's face, Natalie took a closer look at the hole in his forehead. Close range, a through-and-through--right between the eyes--a great shot really. Except one tiny problem...

"You were already dead when you were shot," Natalie mumbled, eyes narrowing in concentration as she took a closer look. No bruising, no blood splatter, just a perfect black circle standing out against gray skin. Looking at the expression on the man's face, she frowned.

Apparently someone had thought him dying wasn't enough.

Missouri was a strange state. It was the only place she had ever received a patient who had died of an illness first, shot second, then delivered to her by a farmer who claimed he happened to find the body in the middle of the road. From the tread mark on the guys leg, arm, and pelvis she was certain that the farmer had done more than just fin the body.

"Looks like you've had a bad day," she murmured, moving away from the body to probe once more at the contents of the stomach.

If it was one thing that made this case more annoying than interesting, it was the way the hospital was built, (creaking floorboards, flickering lights, a lot of soundproof glass, and what looked like a rodent problem was only the beginning of her list of complaints). Natalie had more.

For instance, the morgue. It was small. Tiny. Microscopic. Barely there. Eleven dead bodies, one living and breathing doctor, and a tiny morgue. The math was simple. Natalie was surrounded on all sides but one (she'd been smart enough to make a path to the door for navigational purposes) by dead people.

Eying the stomach contents more closely, Natalie moved it around looking for anything the man could have eaten that would have made him sick--other than the three pounds raw beef.

She was certain that medical school would have told her if Ecoli made humans spike a fever, hallucinate, lose blood circulation, slip into unexplainable hypothermia, and then die...

She supposed a human toe had no right being mixed in with all that raw beef.

It was a severed toe, of course.

And there was another.

And another.

(Rather like Pringles if you thought about it—once you pop, the fun don't stop).

Making a face, Natalie looked at the man who'd apparently had a bad day and then at his stomach once more. Something told her that the raw beef wasn't really raw beef, and by the state of decomposition and level of digestion, it had been eaten after the man had died of the illness but before he had been shot in the head and run over.

Resisting the urge to scratch her forehead, the doctor set her probe on the table beside the tray and maneuvered her way around the room until she was standing over a morgue slab that held unlucky Deceased-Patient Number Seven; dead since ten in the morning, sick sense the morning before that-- and after she made a quick check under the sheet that covered his body--missing a foot. Maybe the poor guy hadn't been lying to Miles when he said his neighbor tried to eat him. They had all just assumed he'd lost the foot while mowing his lawn (or wrestling a bear).

Looking back toward the man on the metal autopsy table, Natalie bit her lower lip and squinted, her eyebrows furrowing in concentration. She wasn't sure how she was going to explain this to her boss without sounding crazy.

Lowering the sheet back over patient number seven's leg, Natalie shuffled four feet to her right and gripped the end of the sheet covering his face. Maybe she shouldn't wait another hour or so before doing this man's autopsy...especially since his foot had ended up halfway digested in a dead man's stomach.

Lifting the sheet, Natalie peered down over her mask.

She was fairly certain that corpses were NOT suppose to blink.

Or growl.

Or look at her like she would make a good afternoon snack.

Well, that _was_ fairly interesting...


	2. Of Marital Bliss and Unfortunate

**In Consideration**

**

* * *

**Of Marital Bliss

* * *

_32 Hours (Pre-Prologue, Toast and Toes)._

Donald Friday had simply been eating his morning toast when his wife decided to take a nibble out of his hand. Not quite sure if she was trying to make a point about his tendency to leave his socks lying around, he nursed his thumb and looked at her in shock.

She looked back, eying his nose as if it held more potential than his hand.

Debra Friday was the sort of woman who never complained about anything, not even her husband's stray socks. She was a firm believer in pacifism and had even made it a point in her life to never raise her voice. In the fifteen years that the two had been married there had only been a handful of arguments, two occasions where she made him sleep on the couch, and one threaten of divorce that couldn't be taken seriously as it had been on April Fools Day and she had been slightly tipsy.

In fact, Donald liked to think that their marriage was a great one. Granted, he was often at the office late and had to fly out on a few business trips a month, but her sudden show of anger was unsettling.

Of course, as any woman who worked a second shift job, Debra never looked good in the early hours. Actually, Donald thought in slight confusion, she was _never_ up by six in the morning, and a quick look at the clock proved that she should could still be asleep. He considered it a good day if he had her up by eight, and even then she had those tired bags under her eyes and hair that looked like it was colonized by birds.

As he regarded her gray complexion, dark eyes, and snarl, Donald was absolutely certain that she had seen better days.

"You don't look good," he stated.

She growled.

"No, really," he said in an attempt to ease her anger, "are you feelings well?"

Stepping forward, he placed his large hand on her forehead and counted to ten. "You don't have a temperature."

In fact, Donald was fairly certain that, when it came to the average body temperature, she was severely lacking a few degrees.

Placing his hand against her cheek, he tried to feel for any warmth.

With the same snarl on her face, she grabbed his hand and attempted to take a bite out of that thumb as well.

"That's it," he said, yanking his thumb out of her mouth, "I'm calling your doctor."

She was probably pregnant.

* * *

What might later be considered the most idiotic and pivotal moment in the history of man kind occurred just one hour later.

Having done his best to get his wife into the sedan, Donald could no longer deny the multiple earthquakes rocking the inside of his stomach. After visiting the restroom to violently evict his morning toast, the businessman became acutely aware of the fact that his wife had wandered off without him. She hadn't even bothered to close the passenger door in her haste.

It could have been the new wave of nausea that had hit him, or just the general idleness of men, but Donald Friday opted to believe that Debra had merely taken a walk several doors down to talk to her neighbor, and thus drove himself to the hospital instead of locating her actual whereabouts.

Besides, he argued, he was the one with the raging temperature, she was not. Debra Friday would do absolutely fine while her husband sought medical attention. He did leave her a nice voice message, however, with an explanation of where he was going and asked her if she would mind stopping by after work.

Two hours later, as Donald laid asleep in the hospital bed, his wife of fifteen years limped ecclesiastically after their elderly neighbor.

Needless to say, no one would consider what had happened precisely twenty four hours before Donald checked himself into the hospital as the most idiotic and pivotal moment in all of human kind.

(Because _those_ events were awfully sketchy and completely without witnesses to give details of all that had occurred. At least, no witnesses with an actual pulse...)

That was, a man named Edward King decided to take a bite out of his neighbor's foot.

More than one bite actually, but no one was really counting.

Ten minutes after that, John Harper was wheeled into the emergency room, where the doctors were surprised to see just how much blood a man missing a foot could leak. Needless to say, the very same John Harper found himself isolation room set up by an NIH response team just three hours later. No on was certain whether it was the shock, blood loss, illness, or poor reaction to the blood transfusions that killed him just five minutes before midnight.

They only hoped his autopsy would give them the answers.

Of course, that would have to wait until the morning, when they had fewer patients dying.

The one fact of the case that would truly be talked about for years to come (or however much longer humanity had) was not the the missing foot, the large number of dying patients, or _I'm-so-hungry-I'll-just-have-to-take-a-bite-out-of-my-neighbor's-toes _Edward King...

It was simply the fact that ten hours before she tried to take a nibble out of her husband's thumb as he ate his morning toast, Debra Friday had died quietly within the walls of the hospital's isolation ward.

Donald Friday, flying home from a business trip, had been unable to listen to the apologetic message left on the answering machine at their home.


	3. Of Odd Sounds and Missing Bodies

Author's note: For all of you wondering, Natalie did not get bitten. XD Can't have her trying to bite chunks out of her friends now, can we?

* * *

**In Consideration**

* * *

Of Odd Sounds and Missing Bodies  
-Ten minutes _post-toes_-

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Sixseveneightnineten. Eleven. No, not eleven. Had she miscounted? Natalie let her eyes sweep the room hurriedly as she recounted the deceased patients. Ten.

She was missing one.

Ignoring the steady thumps coming from within the morgue cooler, Natalie crossed her arms and leaned against the door. In one hand she carried the bone saw she had used to open up the foot-eating-unidentified man, and in the other she held her cell phone, not quite sure what she was going to tell Stephen when she called him.

_By the way, one of our dead patients just tried to eat me, and another is missing._

No, that wouldn't work.

She could ask him to come to the morgue, gently ease him into the fact that there was a patient missing, then lightly mention that the man on her autopsy table had eaten the foot of the man who had just tried to eat her.

No, that wouldn't work either.

_Oh, and, I successfully cut the brain stems of our dead patients, just in case._

He'd probably have a conniption over that one.

Luckily for Natalie, she didn't have to call Stephen, because Stephen was currently pushing open the morgue door.

With a small yelp and a startled jump, Natalie scurried away from the door, relief physically washing over her when she saw that it was only her perfectly healthy and alive boss walking through the door and not a corpse.

"Nat?" He asked, his usual expressionless face twisting in confusion. "You all right? You look a bit pale."

"Fine!" She chirped, mind racing on over what to say. "Just fine. You caught me in the middle of an autopsy, actually," Natalie gave a flimsy smile of reassurance.

"Did you find anything interesting?" Stephen asked, already pulling on a pair of gloves and moving over toward the foot-eater.

Following him slowly, Natalie nodded and cleared her throat. "Yes, actually, I did."

"And...?" He asked, voice trailing off as he probed through the man's stomach contents. Before she could answer him, he squinted and leaned in closer, "are those...?"

"Toes?" She offered. "Yes."

With a new air of confidence, Natalie moved in closer and took the probe from him. "He's a John Doe, the one the farmer brought in this morning. When I was done doing the autopsy I was going to call the police, but I found the...toes...and thought that I had better talk to you first."

He looked at her expectantly.

"They're human," she continued slowly. "Male. All five are in there."

"Do you know who they belong to?" He asked, standing up to take a look around the morgue.

Biting her lower lip, Natalie set the bone saw down on the counter and nodded slowly. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about before I called the police. See..."

Thud.

"Remember the patient who said his neighbor ate his..."

Thud.

"...foot?"

Thud.

Stephen's eyes moved from her face to the place just over her shoulder, as if questioning what the sound was and why it was being made. Looking down at her again, he raised his eyebrow and took a small breath, "Yes, I do."

Thud.

"I think this is his neighbor!" She said above the sounds coming from the morgue cooler while pointing her finger at the dead man on the autopsy table, "And I think he really did eat that guy's foot!"

That got Stephen's attention fairly quickly.

"What?"

She simply shrugged, "I think he ate his foot."

Thud.

A quick flash of the eyes over her shoulder again. "Nat, what is that?"

Thud.

"Natalie, what's in the cooler?" More demanding this time.

"A body." She answered quickly.

Thud.

"What is making that sound?" he asked, moving around the tables to the cooler so he could take a look.

"Please, don't open the door," Natalie said flatly, her frantic expression betraying her voice as she held up a hand as if to tell him to stop.

"Tell me what's making that noise..."

"Just don't open the door." Her half-hearted plead reached deaf ears.

"Nat!"

"The body!" There, she had said it.

The way he looked at her made Natalie want to peer over her shoulder just to be sure that someone wasn't standing there ready to take a bite out of her shoulder. Ignoring the pang of fear in her chest, Natalie worked her way over to Stephen, hoping to get there in time to stop him from satiating his curiosity by opening the cooler door.

"That's impossible. You're joking," he said, reading her face for any signs of foully. Natalie knew that behind those eyes he was certain she was trying to play a prank on him.

"I'm being very serious here, Stephen. In that cooler is a dead man. Behind me, is another dead man. I know that seems cut-and-dry to you. But that dead man," she pointed to the guy on the autopsy table, "ate that man's," she pointed at the cooler door, "foot."

"Nata–"

Thud.

"I know this is going to sound crazy to you, Stephen, but whatever is making these people sick is doing more than that. The dead man in that cooler tried to eat me, and if it wasn't for the fact that Frank's made me watch every zombie movie on this planet, he probably would have been able to do it too."

_Or at least get a sizable chunk out of my arm_, she thought.

Thud.

That was really starting to get annoying.

"So," she added after a moment, "I would really like it if you didn't open that cooler."

Lowering his hand from the door, Stephen cleared his throat and looked around. The expression on his face gave him the air of a man who had just swallowed a mouthful of sour milk, and his eyes blinked owlishly, as if he were trying to digest the words she said and not laugh or check her temperature.

"Is there..." he cleared his throat again, "anything else that you would like to tell me."

Squaring her shoulders, Natalie nodded once, "Yes, actually, there is."

"What?" He asked somewhat regretfully, not entirely sure if he wanted to hear the rest.

"I was told that there were eleven corpses in this morgue including our John Doe. I even counted them myself yesterday night. I just recounted before you walked in here..."

"And...?"

"A body is missing."

Stephen's face became the canvas of confusion as he started moving in her direction, "Somebody took it?"

Shaking her head softly, Natalie gave him a look of apology, "No, I don't think so."

Glancing around at the rest of the corpses, Stephen frowned, "What are you saying, Natalie?"

Suddenly thankful she had taken the initiative to make sure that none of the other corpses would wake up, Natalie sighed and began to peel off her gloves. "What I am saying, Stephen, is that sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning one of our corpses decided to take a stroll."

He stared at her, trying to make heads or tails of her matter-of-fact statement, but failing to do anything other then gawk.

Natalie scratched her forehead and gave him the most apologetic smile she could muster.

"And she was probably hungry."


	4. Of Lions, Tomato Sauce, and Horrible

Author's Note: This is another short addition, but the chapters do vary in shapes, colors and sizes. This one features Frank and Eva with a cameo from Natalie and Stephen. It's time the team gets introduced to their hungry flesh eating friends. What better way than letting the lover of Horror movies himself join in on the fun?

* * *

In Consideration

* * *

**Of Lions, Tomato Sauce, and Horrible Timing.**

On cases like this Frank realized why Natalie was the team pathologist and he was not. Dead people were not his forte, and although living people weren't his forte either, he still felt comfortable being in the same room with them and holding decent conversations.

Not that Natalie talked to her dead patients.

As far as he knew.

Digging around in mud, trash, vents, walk in freezers, and cat litter was Frank's forte, however.

Not that he _needed_ to dig through cat litter in any of their past cases; he just _had_ to at home. Teisha's cat didn't clean up after itself after all.

"It looks like someone spilled tomato sauce everywhere," Eva muttered the second the room lights were switched on.

"Yeah, but tomato sauce doesn't smell like blood."

Nor did it have the same shade, consistency, and tracking ability that blood did. And by the way the red stuff on the wall smelled, looked, and smeared, Frank was certain that it wasn't tomato sauce. A lot of not-tomato sauce. Something told him that if they followed the suspicious red trail they would find the person leaking the suspicious red stuff.

Whether the said person was still alive would have to be determined by looking at them, which meant someone was going to have to open that door.

_Not it_, Frank thought. Besides, he knew what happened when any secondary character in a horror movie opened a door.

Bad things.

It reminded him of the time he and Stephen found a lion in the apartment, and how close he had come to jumping out of his shoes and screaming like a girl.

Fun times.

If there was a lion in this house he did not want to be the one to find it.

Eva remained in the doorway looking around the room with a crinkled nose, "Next time Connor wants you to bring someone along for the ride don't pick me."

"Hey, don't blame me. Nat's the one talking his ear off and Miles has patient duty. You were the only one left." Doing his absolute best not to step in the blood, Frank looked back at Eva and smiled innocently.

"What was Nat talking to Connor about anyway?" Eva ventured to ask.

"Beats me, the woman doesn't make it a habit to write memos. If it's anything important he'll relay the information to us. Hey, do you want to go open that door?"

"No," Eva grinned triumphantly, "you're closer. "

"Fine, _I'll_ open it, but I don't want to hear you complaining anymore about how I get paid more than you," turning away from her, Frank continued his trek toward the opposite end of the room.

The case, as it were, was not the sort Frank would want to be the lead pathologist in. Consider, for a moment, having a boss the required no stone left unturned in the search for truth. Now, consider a large patient base with a good two or three dying every hour on the hour. That's a hefty amount of stones to turn. He'd take a bread crumb trail of blood to autopsies any day.

After all, dead people were not his forte.

Of course, there was a very good possibility that there was a dead person on the other side of that door.

Or a lion.

For once in his life he was hoping it was a dead person.

"Rossi," Eva intoned from behind him, voice closer than it had been a minute before. She must have been following him slowly, more curious about the mystery behind the door than she had let on. Looking at her briefly, Frank saw that she was on her phone.

"What?" She asked, her face contorting into disbelief.

Taking that as his cue, Frank turned back toward his destination and took the last two steps, his hand resting on the doorknob. He'd count to ten before opening it.

_One._

No. No, he rather liked counting down actually.

_Ten._

_Nine._

"Yeah. Wait, you think what? No no no, I don't care about the toes, Natalie. I can't understand you when you talk that fa—_Oh, Hello Dr. Connor._ Well no, why's Nat so excited?"

Snorting, Frank continued the countdown.

_Eight._

_Seven._

_Si-_

"What about the toes? The what did what?"

A look back rewarded Frank with a patented Eva eye roll and shrug.

_Three._

_Two._

"I don't understa…. What!?"

_One._

Sighing, Frank gave the door a good tug at the precise moment Eva yelled at him not to.

The door did not open with a loud creak, nor did the opening of the door reveal a ravenous lion with large sharp teeth. There was, however, a low growl as the door opened and the shuffling of feet, more human than large cat, and the rank smell of not-tomato sauce. Shooting an apprehensive look back at the press liaison, Frank swallowed hard when the only look of reassurance she gave him was bulging eyes and a silent garble of words. Leave it to him to do something the person with horrible timing on the phone told him not to do.

He faintly wondered, as he snapped his head back in the direction of the dark room, what Stephen had told her.

Frank also wondered if what Stephen told her had anything to do with the limping, growling human being trudging slowly in his direction.

With his luck, probably.

It was cases like these, Frank decided as he looked into the hungry eyes of a rather gray looking blonde woman, that made him wish the black guy who opened scary doors wasn't always the first to die in horror movies.

_"Holy shi…"_


	5. Of Unaccounted for Factors

Author's Note: Okay, so this chapter took me a good seven hours to write, and as a testament to my lack of life, five of those hours happened to be in one sitting. So, not only does my butt hurt, but my eyes do as well. Oh well, that doesn't really matter, what matters is that in those seven hours, I wrote probably my favorite chapter out of every story I have ever written. _**Ever**_. Just to make an Emphasis. So, here you have it, another chapter.

* * *

**In Consideration.**

* * *

**Of Unaccounted for Factors.**

There are thousands of factors that can go unaccounted for in any given case. Talent, education, skill, and luck had saved the group many uncomfortable side effects of such factors in previous cases. Until this one, naturally. No one really expects zombies to spring through open doors like Jack-in-the-boxes. _No one_ not suffering from an overactive imagination, that is.

Unaccounted for factors were what caused Natalie and Stephen to vacate the morgue in a simultaneous attempt to save a coding patient--whom, to the surprise of neither, died anyway–while Miles wandered haplessly into the morgue in a blind search for the two superior doctors, resembling a lost puppy with the eyesight of a bat and cunning of a sedimentary rock. As Natalie and Stephen were meandering back in the direction from which they came, they decided that they should drop an informative call to Eva and Frank and warn them of the _development _in the case.

Of course, because of unaccounted for factors, their call came too late, _and_–not only that–but as Frank was opening the scary living room door, Miles was opening the scary cooler door in the morgue. Apparently neither suffered from a severe case of overactive imagination. A pity really, considering one was a horror movie guru and the other was a closet pansy.

You can only imagine the surprise on Natalie's and Stephen's faces as Miles ran by them in a deep state of hyperventilation. They expected his distress had something to do with the limper dragging his stumpy leg in their direction.

"He opened the morgue cooler," Natalie muttered in disbelief, rooted in place as their dead patient came closer. Perhaps, she thought dismally, somewhere along the line her wires had been crossed and instead of agreeing with Stephen when he stated that Miles simply wasn't good enough for the team like she was suppose to she had argued the opposite. It would certainly explain a lot.

"He opened the morgue cooler," Stephen echoed with a nod, confirming her disbelief while his belief in her prior statements solidified. So she hadn't been lying when she said their dead patients liked to take strolls, which was a relief really, he wouldn't know what to do if Natalie developed a severe and painstakingly difficult mental disorder to get rid of. Not that he actually knew what to do with Stumpy, but that could all be taken in stride, couldn't it?

It occurred to neither of them that they had failed to mention to Miles the importance of not opening the morgue cooler.

Unaccounted for factors.

Can't be helped, really.

Unlike Miles, though, neither ran in a state of dishevel. In defense of their sanity Natalie had already gone through this before and considered herself a seasoned veteran while a small protein deep in Stephen's DNA sequencing refused to allow him to leave the woman he had grown quite fond of all alone with the groaning undead guy. They watched, instead, in a state of awe as the undead guy came closer. Such gross and unwavering interest could later be credited to the fact that, as a cripple, John Harper made a turtle look like a track star.

"I-is Eva still on the phone?" Natalie asked.

Stephen held the cell phone in her direction and gave something that faintly resembled a nod, eyes glued to the sight before them. How was your day? Oh, good good, watched the future of the Special Olympics limp in my direction, but hey, it could have been worse...the guy could have had both his feet.

Grabbing for the phone, Natalie clutched it close to her ear, "Eva...Eva, are you there?" Proper phone etiquette when one is dealing with ravenous zombies hadn't actually become a social science yet, so Natalie would have to deal with what little experience she had, which, following the popular trend, wasn't much. Zero percent, actually, but who was there to scold her for it?

There was a clatter, a clank, a slam, six seconds of silence (yet John Harper was still no closer, largely if not entirely due to his inability to judge the difference in leg lengths, primitive brain functions will do that to people, so will severed feet) before the sound of breathing could be heard on the other end of the phone, "Hello?"

"Eva, good, you're still there. Are you guys all right?"

"All right!? All right!? T-that woman...that thing..." Eva had the gist of the proper way to act on the phone while simultaneously dealing with a starving dead person. Panic, though widely considered a poor state of mind to be in when in a rather rough fix, was precisely the right combination of emotions one should be feeling while being followed by a zombie. Of course, panic-induced directional dyslexia is the number one cause of people running in the _wrong_ direction during times of horror induced terror (perhaps headless chickens really did have it right. Why run in one direction when you could just flail all over the place? You're less predictable that way). Natalie only hoped her friends had scurried the opposite direction of the zombie, but one could never be sure, people had done more unnaturally stupid things at inopportune moments before, just take a look at organized religion.

"Is Frank okay?" Natalie asked patiently, or as patiently as her vocal chords would allow, which was about one and a half octaves higher than her usual pitch and two times as fast.

"Y-yes, Frank's fine. He-uh, he hit her...hit it with a lamp...and now...we're in the car. Here, he wants to talk to you..."

_"Stephen, is that you?"_

"No, Frank, it's Natalie. Are you all right?"

There is a state of shock one might find themselves in that involves a great deal of shouting the obvious. Frank found himself in such a state, and Natalie found herself holding the phone a foot from her ear. If she cut out the volume of his voice and the various adjectives and adverbs that couldn't possibly be useful or child-friendly, which she did, Natalie could come to the conclusion that by asking the obvious question she had eventually received the not-so-obvious answer.

"They're fine, both of them," but she was beginning to think they were going to have to regularly check Frank's blood pressure after this. That was assuming he actually came out of the ordeal _with _blood pressure...As for Eva, Natalie didn't have to be there to know that the young press liaison was going to think twice next time she put a skirt and heels on. And Miles, if he hadn't gone and gotten himself bitten already, well, he'd probably develop a deeply rooted complex involving doors, closets, and the color silver.

Rivaling the one protein hidden deep within Stephen's DNA sequencing was another, vastly more logical protein, that, if personified could be credited for leaving a message in the recesses of his brain. The message, only if the protein was personified, simply said, "Hello there, I realize this seems like a bad time, seeing as most of your thought processes are currently engaged in gawking at Mr. Stumpy and his incredible lack of tactful motor skills, but I must make you aware of the fact that not only will he eventually catch up to you two immobilized idiots, but he'll likely take a fruitful chunk out of both your faces. And, I really don't know about you, but I don't think that can possibly be good for her complexion or yours, not to mention your health. So, either get a move on and drag the girl with you, or bash the thing over the head." All and all, in his UnStephenlike gawking state, the British sounding voice-of-reason translated to, "Get a bloody move on!"

Before a socially retarded teenager could text the phrase OMGWTF, Stephen had Natalie by the elbow and was dragging her down the hallway. The phrase Panic-Induced Directional Dyslexia dug a pit in her mind and made itself comfortable as they advanced in the direction _of _Jonathan Harper and not _away_ from him. Where was Frank to tell him that such a bold and completely idiotic move was what got countless hormone and steroid filled teenagers butchered in horror movies? (Still on the other end of the phone, actually, wondering why Natalie had just let out an unladylike noise of disbelief.)

"What are you _doing_?" She asked, writhing in the direction Stephen wasn't moving in. If they weren't dealing with mindless zombies and a large patient base that would become a large undead army, he would probably snap at her for questioning his authority and slip in a low-blow question like, 'Don't you trust me?' Of course she trusted him but, like a jar of honey trusts a hungry bear running at him claiming he just wants to be friends, she knew that at this moment in time he'd either gone completely mad or he was going to give her to Stumpy as a consolation prize for at least _trying_ to catch them. Her mind screamed, that given the circumstances, both were not only likely but probably true.

"How do you kill it?" He asked.

Well, she hadn't expected that.

"It's already dead...okay...okay," she stated with her hands raised, noticing the familiar expression of annoyance spanning across his grim but trained features, "I tried hitting him upside the head the first time he tried to eat me, but that didn't work...I...killed...the others by cutting their brain stems..." And while I was at it I sang them lovely lullabies and made them warm milk with honey.

"Watch him," Stephen ordered, letting go of her elbow, "I'm going to get the bone saw..." It seemed that the protein that had made it impossible for him to leave her alone with the thing had been forcefully elbowed in the figurative nose by the figurative elbow of the personified British voice-of-reason.

And while your at it, grab a game of monopoly and distract him with it. What if he doesn't like Monopoly, Stephen? Well, then, find something shiny that resembles a brain and dangle in front of his face. And where the hell would I find one of those? You're a highly intelligent doctor, make something up. Right, and when I'm done with that, I'll find a nice coloring book and teach him how to color inside the lines!

If only.

Arguing with him was pointless, he'd already disappeared in the morgue, leaving her with the stumbling, groaning, and impossibly gray Jonathan Harper. Giving him a trembling smile, Natalie took a step backward to compensate for his slow step forward...but of course, like in all good horror movies, her step led to a rather ungraceful collision with a stray linen cart, and with a loud humph and an ungraceful flail of arms, she fell onto her butt, resembling an awkward turtle that thought it would be neat if it did a back flip off of its rock.

She definitely hadn't been expecting that.

Unaccounted factors were, after all, what gave slow moving corpses the opportunity to catch up with their living, breathing pray. He just had to limp there first.


	6. Of Linen Carts, Big Red Buttons

Author's Note: And so we finally get to see what Miles has been doing...

* * *

In Consideration

* * *

**Of Linen Carts, Big Red Buttons, and the Poor Bastards on the Third Floor**

If Natalie where to create a mental checklist of all the things that had gone terribly wrong in the last twenty-four hours, she would have both a script for the next Hitchcock movie and a wholesomely sound cause to have her head examined. Such examinations, she believed, should not involve her brain being munched on by a dead man with a score of negative 10.5 when it came to hand-eye coordination. In fact, when it came down to it, she was certain that her foe, the linen cart, had better luck tipping over on her in an attempt of suffocation than Harper had of reaching her before the next ice age.

Nevertheless, she was caught in a predicament that was more of an irony than a threat (up a dry creek with three paddles, a bowl of thirsty fish, and a manual that told her the best way to get home consisted of clicking her heels together or partaking in a rain dance). Completely ridiculous metaphors aside, she was not so much screwed as she was embarrassingly debilitated and confused. Her subconscious, in an attempt to comfort her, pointed a large, fabricated finger in Stephen's direction, completely willing to blame this all on him.

Speaking of Stephen, the man needed to work on better timing and/or how to properly locate a bone saw in a crunch.

Jonathan Harper groaned, shuffled, and tripped. Propping herself up on bruised elbows, Natalie watched him eye her hungrily and found it marginally depressing that the first man to look at her that way in months was not only missing a foot but was dead and liked his leg-of-human rare. This clearly had to be a divine message. Maybe it was finally time to reevaluate her life and figure out what the hell she was doing wrong. Then again, interjected her voice of reason, maybe she should save that particular self-help exercise for a time when she wasn't being stalked by a slow-moving zombie.

"Stephen!" she shouted around the precise moment Jonathan Harper shoved the tip of her leather shoe into his mouth (the grimace on his face suggested that stained, dead cow tasted like fried chalk—but, then again, the living-dead aren't particularly known for their dashing smiles). Still, only minutely in fear for her life, Natalie waited until Harper took a nibble at her other shoe to kick him in the nose. The mixed sensation of, once again, tasting fried chalk and having his nose pressed flat against his face--like a red button that has 'DON'T PUSH' stamped across it in ten languages except English that finds itself in a room full of hyper children--caused Harper to stiffen like a playful opossum and spasm before going after her heel.

Kick 2.0 reduced the zombie to a turtle-on-its-shell state. From there Natalie cursed Stephen and secured a large, dirty linen cloth into Stumpy's mouth, stomped her foot on the big red button once more, tipped the cart over on his head, and wiped her slobbery shoes on the ground before taking a long-deserved and much-needed breath of stale hospital air.

Straightening her lab coat, Natalie cleared her throat.

Now that _that_ was over….

* * *

When Stephen emerged from the morgue it was into what appeared to be an empty hallway. To prevent the bone saw in his hand from clamoring to the floor in an ungraceful matter, he gripped the handle tightly and opened his mouth a millimeter in shock.

"Damn it."

The linen cart, toppled over and emptied of its contents (which had found their way onto the floor in a scattered fashion), caught his attention and gave him a small hint of what had happened while he was away. His sixth sense picked up the shaky visual of Natalie fighting the cart and losing, and he all but grimaced. There were some horror movie clichés that couldn't quite be avoided in real life moments of terror, and a linen cart with vast tripping potential in the middle of a hospital hall appeared to be one of them.

"Grraerraghhh."

Stephen's eyebrow shot up an inch and gave a nice hello to his hair. Looking down he attempted to discern where the sound had come from and was greeted with the sight of shifting cloth. Flesh-eating cloth, now that was a new one, perhaps he'd have to talk to Frank about the horror potential of it later...it could explain where Natalie had disappeared off to; and Stephen was certainly in no position to doubt the possibility of anything that appeared to be remotely crazy.

"Grraeragghh, gah, graaaaaaaaaaaaaar," then again, linen didn't have vocal chords, decaying or otherwise.

He nudged the pile of flailing cloth with the tip of his boot, and his hairline was thus introduced to his other eyebrow. "Ahhh," he stated in understanding.

* * *

Miles took a deep breath, looked around the empty hallway, panted, and took off at a slowing jog. He didn't quite know where he was going, but he figured that if he kept running in one direction he'd find someone, dead or alive, with a band-aid for his bleeding thumb.

He hadn't been particularly aware that dead people could bite so hard.

In a moment where he believed glancing over his shoulder was more imperative than looking ahead of him, Miles missed the sight of Stephen gazing thoughtfully down at a moving pile of cloth and slammed into a toppled cart with a loud, "Umph!"

"Grraaaaaarggh!"

Funny, Miles hadn't been aware that linen could talk.

* * *

The only problem with the nursing staff, as far as Natalie was concerned, was that when asked where the recently deceased patient had ambled off to, they stared at her as if a new head had sprouted out of her left shoulder.

"He could have skipped, frolicked, or dragged himself off...I really don't care which, but where the hell did he go?" Anyone, even those with a negative twenty on the Emotional Quotient scale, could hear the panic in Natalie's voice as she shook the rather bored looking, middle-aged nurse who had a distinct expression etched across her face that screamed, _'The world better be ending, bi--' _Except, perhaps, any bored looking, middle-aged nurse who had happened to score a negative twenty-one...

"Have you checked the morgue, Dr. Durant?"

"I just came from the morgue!"

"Have you checked the hallway leading to the morgue, Dr. Durant?"

"Obviously, if I just came from the morgue!"

"Have you checked the elevators...?"

There was a substantial pause before, "What would a dead man be doing on an elevator?"

The nurse smiled, as if a terrific secret had been revealed, "My point exactly, Dr. Durant. Now, if you would excuse me, we still have living patients, and they need their beddings changed."

Releasing the woman's arms slowly, Natalie took a solemn look down both directions of the hall. Having just discovered that not only was there a dead woman walking the streets and a dead man stumbling through the halls--but that the man who had just coded and died had vanished as well...well, she was having a hard time swallowing it all. "Um, well, if you see him..."

"I'll contact you and the National Inquirer right away. Are you okay, Dr. Durant, did you eat any bad bread today? Perhaps you are running a fever..."

"No, no, I'm fine," there are only just zombies out and about, nothing too much to worry about, "Thanks for your time. Sorry for the misunderstanding..."

* * *

Somewhere on the third floor an elevator opened with a ding, and a very pale, hungry, and dead looking man took a good long, vacant stare at what appeared to be a feast of quadriplegics.


End file.
